From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitismby Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov

Journal of
Cold War Studies, 4:1, Winter 2002, pp. 66-80

In the Soviet Union the "anti-cosmopolitan" campaigns of the late 1940s
and early 1950s were a taboo subject for many years afterward. Even during
the "thaw" under Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet publications made no mention of
the campaigns. Only with the advent of glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev
in the late 1980s was the topic finally discussed in Soviet newspapers
and journals, beginning with an article in the journal Zvezda.1
This initial article was followed by numerous other articles and
discussions on Soviet television, which brought to light new information
about the events of 1948-1949. Those events, spurred initially by
the anti-Western thrust of Soviet policy during the early Cold War,
are the subject of this article. The article will trace the origins
and evolution of the anti-cosmopolitan campaigns and will then recount
the purge of the Philological Faculty at Leningrad State University
in 1948-1949. The events in Leningrad provided a microcosm of
what was occurring in the Soviet Union at large.

This episode is useful in showing how the external demands on Soviet
foreign policy during the opening years of the Cold War contributed to
changes in Soviet internal policy and an intensification of domestic
repression.

The Inception of an Anti-Western Campaign

During the final stages of World War II, Soviet troops advanced far
into Central Europe as they repulsed the German forces and captured
Berlin. Before
the war Soviet citizens had not been permitted to travel to Europe,
but troops returning from the front lines had been "contaminated" by
significant exposure to Western mores. To prevent Western ideas from
spreading within Soviet society after the war, the authorities undertook
anti-Western propaganda campaigns and continued to promote Russian
nationalist images and themes. Josif Stalin's willingness to emphasize
Russian nationalism over class-based considerations had been evident
in the 1920s and 1930s, but it took on new dimensions after World War
II. Earlier on, Stalin had invoked national categories only when they
facilitated his political battles. After World War II his nationalist
pronouncements became more sweeping and virulent. A decree issued in
the name of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party
(VKP) on 10 February 1948 claimed that the opera 'The Great Friendship,"
by V. Muradelli, had given

the misleading impression that peoples from the Caucasus such as Georgians
and Ossetes were at war with the Russian people back then [i.e., during
the civil war and consolidation of Soviet power in 1918-1920],
which is historically false. The main obstacle to the establishment of
friendship between these peoples [and Russia] during that period in the
Northern Caucasus was posed by the Ingushetians and the Chechens.
2

This decree and its connection with Russian nationalism were of special
signi- ficance at this point because both the Chechens and the Ingush
had been de- ported en masse in 1944 and were still living in exile. The
decree revealed the worrisome side of Russian nationalism in the Stalin
era: that it could be directed against other groups and nations within
the multinational Soviet state.

In line with the revival of nationalist sentiment, the notion of
patriotism was redefined. The word patriot was increasingly
conflated with the word Russian. Those of non-Russian nationality
began to be accused of a lack of devotion to the "socialist motherland,"
a shift of policy that had distinctly anti-Western overtones. Attacks
against "anti-patriots," including those deemed to be favorably disposed
toward the West and toward bourgeois culture, was the central element of
all the ideological campaigns from 1946 through 1953. These campaigns
were initiated in August 1946 with a decree issued by the VKP Central
Committee regarding the journals Zvezda and Leningrad.3
The decree was followed by a series of other decrees--on the repertoire
of dramatic theaters (August 1946), on the film "Big Life" (September
1946), and on other cultural topics.

The decrees of 1946 marked the beginning of a patriotic and antibourgeois
campaign in the cultural sphere. Stalin and two of his closest aides,
Vyacheslav Molotov and Andrei Zhdanov, met with the leaders of the Soviet
Writers' Union (Anatolii Fadeev, Boris Gorbatov, and Konstantin Simonov)
on 14 May 1947 in the Kremlin. The discussion focused primarily on
"Soviet patriotism." Stalin presented the writers with a written document
"advising" them to struggle against the "spirit of self-abasement
among many of our intellectuals." The document referred specifically
to the cases of N. G. Klyuev and G. I. Roskin. "The appearance of this
document in print," remembers Roskin, "was the beginning of the struggle
against self-abasement, feelings of inadequacy, and unwarranted groveling
before foreign culture, which Stalin had said would require many years
of chiseling away at a single point."
4
The emphasis on "patriotism" and "groveling before the West" was
indicative of Stalin's political objectives at that time.

The connection between the new ideological doctrine and Soviet foreign
policy was underscored by Molotov (who was still Soviet foreign minister)
at a special session of the Moscow City Council (Mossovet) on 6 November
1947. At the session, marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Bolshevik
rise to power, Molotov declared that

the Soviet people are resolute in their determination to bring an end to
the remnants of the past as soon as possible and to launch unrelenting
attacks on all manifestations of groveling before and slavish imitation
of the West and its capitalist culture.
5

Over the next few years almost every area of science and culture was
embroiled in grandiose campaigns to do away with "groveling before the
West," "anti-patriotism" (later "anticosmopolitanism"), and generally
anything "non- Russian."

The demarcation of Soviet society into "Russian" and "non-Russian"
as well as "patriots" and "antipatriots" sparked tension, caused
neighbors to be suspicious of one another, and evoked the specter of
the "enemy." Newly available evidence confirms that this is precisely
what Stalin sought. Public fear of an "enemy" suited his goals in the
Cold War. Unlike in World War II, when the main enemy was unmistakably
Germany, the anti-Western/anti- cosmopolitan campaigns were directed
against abstract foreign foes on the one hand (e.g., global imperialism,)
and against specific groups and nations within the USSR on the other. This
policy had been adumbrated by the mass
deportations that Stalin ordered during the war and the imprisonment or
execution of all those who supposedly had collaborated with the Germans
or had found themselves in occupied territory and been repatriated. The
campaign in the late 1940s against internal enemies was intended to
place the blame for the continued enormous hardships of Soviet life on
"fascists," "American imperialists," and other "alien elements" and to
keep the populace in a constant state of tension.

Increasingly, as discussed below, the anticosmopolitan campaigns took on
an overtly anti-Semitic tone. There is no longer any doubt that Stalin
himself was directly responsible for this policy. In private conversations
he had openly expressed his desire to eliminate "Jewish influence" and
to help a "native" (i.e., non-Jewish) intelligentsia gain sway in the
Soviet Union.
6
Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Allilueva, later acknowledged that the
murder of the eminent Jewish actor Solomon Mikhoels in Minsk in January
1948 was undoubtedly sparked by "[her] father's well-known tendency
to see 'Zionism' and plots everywhere."
7
Konstantin Simonov, one of the writers who had met with Stalin in
1947, recalls that "in the very last years of his life Stalin held a
position on the Jewish question diametrically opposed to the position
he espoused in public."
8
At Stalin's behest, Jewish writers, artists, and academics came under
attack in 1949. Everything possible was done to "expose" them, remove
them, and ultimately replace them with "real" Russians of known loyalty
to the regime.

The Veselovskii "Discussions"

The campaign against foreign influences escalated sharply in June 1947
when accusations were lodged against scholars of literature and other
fields of the humanities. Of particular importance was the "discussion"
regarding Aleksandr Veselovskii, a literary scholar at Petersburg
University during the nineteenth century. Veselovskii, who had died in
1906, became the subject of ideological battles in 1947 because he had
sought to construct a scientifically
based history of general literature, drawing on the plots and forms
that prevailed in various national cultures. He believed that this
approach would reveal the links between tradition and innovation,
between folklore and literature, and between collective and individual
creativity. Initially, he was held in high esteem by many of the
leading Soviet literary scholars. In 1938 the jubilee session of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences, dedicated to Veselovskii's centennial, was
conducted with great festivity. The publication in 1940 of his famous
Historical Poetics, edited by V. M. Zhirmunskii, who also wrote
an extensive introduction, became a major literary event.
9
In anticipation of the approaching 110th anniversary of Veselovskii's
birth, material about him continued to appear in 1946 and 1947.

The discussion that focused on Veselovskii in June 1947, as the anti-
foreign campaign was getting under way, involved some degree of confusion
with his brother Aleksei, who was also a literary scholar and the author
of a boo on Western influence in Russian literature, published in 1883.
10
The attacks on Aleksandr Veselovskii were launched by Anatolii Fadeev at
the 11th plenary session of the Governing Board of the Soviet Writers'
Union. In a report entitled "Soviet Literature After the Decree of the
VKP Central Committee of 14 August 1946 on the Journals Zvezda
and Leningrad," Fadeev (who headed the Governing Board)
raised the question of "the Veselovskii School." Fadeev claimed that
Veselovskii was at odds with the revolutionary-democratic tradition of
other nineteenth-century literary critics and was "the chief proponent
of the obsequiousness before the West that characterized a certain
portion of Russian literary scholarship in the past and present."
11

Fadeev then castigated a recent book by Isaak Nusinov, Pushkin and
World Literature, which had come out to favorable reviews when it
was published in 1941.
12
According to Fadeev, Nusinov claimed that "all light comes from the
West, while Russia is an Eastern country" and that Pushkin was a
"West European writer" and a "universalist," not a Russian.
13
These allegations intensified a campaign against Nusinov that had
begun the previous month. Fadeev noted that despite fierce criticism
of Nusinov in print and at
department meetings of the Moscow Pedagogical Institute and the
Pedagogical Institute for Foreign Languages, the latter had refused to
acknowledge that he had behaved in an "un-Party-like manner" and had
"distorted the bright image of the great Russian poet."

Fadeev also condemned Vladimir Shishmarev, the director of the Institute
for World Literature, for his recent work on Veselovskii.
14
Fadeev expressed dismay that "all matters of literary education for
young people at the Gorky Institute of World Literature, as well as
at the Moscow and Leningrad Universities, are headed by parrots of
Veselovskii and his blind apologists." He called on the Soviet Academy
of Sciences and Ministry of Higher Education to rectify the situation.
15
In the subsequent discussion, all the participants voiced approval
of Fadeev's report and denounced the "Western school of philological
and literary scholars, whom A. Fadeev very accurately described in
his report."
16

Over the next few months, writers and scholars amplified on Fadeev's
remarks, publishing commentaries in the journal Oktyabr'. In an
article titled "On the Relationship of Russian Literature and Russian
Criticism to the Cap- italist West," Valerii Kirpotin, a well-known critic
and literary scholar, emphasized the importance of nineteenth-century
Russian realism, which, in his words, was "the bravest, the most
consistent, and the loftiest realism." Kirpotin denounced those who,
like Veselovskii, "are conspiring to dismantle the entire edifice of
Russian literature stone by stone [and] who are giving away our legacy,
which is uniquely original in its challenges and forms, to for- eigners."
17

Faced with this onslaught of criticism, almost no one was ready to defend
Veselovskii. One of the few exceptions was Shishmarev, who responded to
the attacks of Fadeev. Shishmarev said that it was a "scholarly error"
and a "political mistake" to regard Veselovskii as having "groveled
before the West." He declared that "the new evaluation of Veselovskii
has provoked enormous bewilderment throughout our Union and among the
members of various generations and national cultures."
18
Another defense of Veselovskii came from the
critic Viktor Shklovskii, who praised Veselovskii as a "great scholar"
and "patriot." Although Shklovskii claimed that Veselovskii had not always
behaved properly, he insisted that the attacks on Veselovskii "are clearly
based on a misunderstanding. . . . Much in the work of Veselovskii may be
denied, but it cannot be rejected completely; it is a part of our legacy."
19

The defenses of Veselovskii, however, were few and far between. Criticism
of the nineteenth-century scholar intensified, and well-known
intellectuals in Moscow were accused of "groveling before the West" and of
disparaging Russia at the expense of "foreigners, particularly Germans."
20
Others were accused of being "under the sway of bourgeois
scholarship." All fields of the humanities--philosophy, history,
foreign languages, and others--were affected. Scholars were attacked
for having used foreign words and "overly clever" scholarly terms.
21
These criticisms, though vulgar, were intended to bolster the VKP's
claims that the Soviet Union was once again under threat from the
"bourgeois West."

Stalin's drive to isolate the country from foreign influences proved
highly detrimental for all fields of academic research. Scholars studying
foreign countries, foreign literatures, or foreign languages were deemed
suspect. Anything smacking of Western influence was potentially grounds
for criticism and expulsion--and even arrest. The bizarre nature of the
process was evident when a well-known military historian, P. A. Zhilin
(who later was elevated to the rank of Lieutenant-General and appointed
head of the Institute of Military History), was asked publicly "why
he does not use French sources in his work." To thunderous applause,
Zhilin responded, "I do not use enemy materials."
22

After several months of "discussion," the results of the anti-Veselovskii
campaign were summed up in March 1948 by the newspaper Kul'tura
i zhizn' (Culture and life), an organ of the VKP Agitation and
Propaganda Department. In an editorial titled "Against Bourgeois
Liberalism in Literary Scholarship," the newspaper denounced Veselovskii
as a "liberal positivist" who denied the uniqueness of Russian culture
and Russia's reliance on the West. According to the editorial, "the
Veselovskii school's 'activity' consists solely of groveling before all
things foreign, a trait that is one of the most repul- sive vestiges of
capitalism in the consciousness of some of the backward
elements of our intelligentsia."
23
The editorial singled out Shishmarev, Nusinov, and others for
condemnation, and it castigated the undue laxness shown during the

unnecessary, unprincipled, and thoroughly misguided discussion of
Veselovskii. What is necessary is not to discuss Veselovskii, but to
expose the bourgeois- liberal essence of his work and the ideological harm
caused by literary apologists for the reactionary views of Veselovskii.
24

The appearance of this editorial sent an unmistakable signal. From
then on, the struggle against Veselovskii "apologists" and "parrots"
took on a more ominous tone. The hysteria that surrounded the name of
Veselovskii, and the tense atmosphere it engendered in the scholarly
community, compelled the most eminent researchers not only to conceal
their true reactions to the events around them, but also to recant and
atone for their supposedly misguided opinions. The humiliating process
of public self-criticism had by that point become pervasive. Since the
mid-1930s self-criticism had been an integral part of all high-profile
political proceedings, and most people had accepted--both then and
later on--that it was necessary to play by the rules of the game. The
ritual of self-criticism was intended to forestall and, if necessary,
eradicate dissent. Anyone who was forced to confess in public to a non-
existent crime and to repent for it was bound to be a morally crushed
individual--humiliated and devastated.

This practice served Stalin's interests well, but it exacted an onerous
toll on the Soviet academic community. Leading scholars were compelled
to offer their "total endorsement of the ideas expressed by Kul'tura
i zhizn' regarding cosmopolitanism and groveling before the West." A
resolution adopted "unanimously" by the Academic Council of the Philology
Faculty at Leningrad State University (LGU) in April 1948 left no doubt
about the prevailing line:

The effort by a group of scholars to revive the teachings of Veselovskii
is an attempt to impose on our scholarship the principles of a foreign
and hostile bourgeois-liberal approach to literature, with its typically
cosmopolitan and ideologically empty cult of pure philology. The political
harm of such efforts becomes clear if we take into account that it is
precisely under this banner that scholars representing American and
Western reaction, in the predatory interests of their owners, are now
promoting the idea of a purely non-national, non-class driven world
scholarship.
25

Prominent literary and linguistic scholars who only recently had
defied the unfounded accusations leveled against them were unwilling
by this point to say even a word in their own defense. To avoid being
deemed ideologically and politically hostile, they voluntarily began to
acknowledge and repent for their allegedly uncritical attitudes toward
the works of Veselovskii.
26

Two days after the Academic Council adopted its resolution, a Communist
Party meeting was convened by the LGU Philology Faculty under the
slogans "Against Bourgeois Liberalism in the Study of Literature" and
"In Support of Bolshevik Party Loyalty in Literary Scholarship." The
featured speaker was Aleksandr Dement'ev, who reaffirmed the harsh stance
against "admirers" and "disciples" of Veselovskii and mentioned specific
scholars who were guilty of espousing "grossly erroneous" views. The
criticism was directed not only against "putrid intellectuals" outside
the VKP, but also against Communists whose pronouncements were deemed
"insufficiently principled."
27
In the climate of the late 1940s, expectations of punitive measures
against these scholars were widespread.

The Anti-Semitic Campaign

Up to this point the campaign of 1947-1948 had not been directed
against specific nationalities. The charges leveled against individuals
pertained solely to their alleged "groveling before and slavish imitation
of liberalism, formalism, and cosmopolitanism." Those attacked were of
various nationalities, including ethnic Russians, Belorussians, Poles,
and Germans.

In 1949, however, the attacks on cosmopolitans (kosmopolity)
acquired a markedly anti-Semitic character. The very term
cosmopolitan, which began to appear ever more frequently in
newspaper headlines, was increasingly paired in the lexicon of the time
with the word rootless (bezrodnye).28
The practice of
equating cosmopolitans with Jews was heralded by a speech delivered in
late December 1948 by Anatolii Fadeev at a plenary session of the board
of the Soviet Writers' Union.
29
His speech, titled "On Several Reasons for the Lag in Soviet
Dramaturgy," was followed a month later by a prominent editorial in
Pravda, "On an Anti-Patriotic Group of Theater Critics."
30
The "anti- patriotic group of theater critics" consisted of Aleksandr
Borshchagovskii, Abram Gurvich, Efim Kholodov, Yulii Yuzovskii, and
a few others also of Jewish origin. In all subsequent articles and
speeches the anti-patriotism of theater and literary critics (and
later of literary scholars) was unequivocally connected with their
Jewish nationality.
31

The backdrop for this campaign was the recent murder of Solomon Mikhoels
and the arrests in early 1949 of the prominent Jewish authors David
Bergelson, Lev Kvitko, Perets Markish, and Itzik Feffer along with other
members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Newly available evidence
leaves no doubt that Stalin himself orchestrated these events.
32
Although the attacks soon spread to other professions, the chief target
of the campaign in early 1949 was the theater world, which had been
ravaged in earlier years by severe purges.
33
The Soviet press highlighted the new "threat" posed by cosmopolitans
and "anti-patriots."
34
Strident articles featuring long lists of the "guilty" appeared in the
journal Oktyabr', including Vasilii Ivanov's "The Sabotage of the
Cosmopolitan Holtzman," Aleksandr Belik's "The Anti-Patriot Brovman,"
and Pavel Izmest'ev's "We Will Destroy the Rootless Cosmopolitans Once
and for All!"
35

Within weeks, the focus of the campaign shifted to the field of literary
studies. In mid-March 1949 the Academic Council of the Institute of World
Literature held meetings that led to charges of "ideological deviations"
and "cosmopolitanism" against numerous scholars. Valerii Kirpotin was
accused of "political mistakes" despite his recent denunciations of the
"agents of Veselovskii."
36
The Academic Council passed a resolution denouncing the "gross
perversions and mistakes" of a "clique" led by Kirpotin and decrying
"with anger and contempt" the attempts of the rootless cosmopolitans
"to corrupt our great Soviet culture."
37
Shortly thereafter, the journal Oktyabr' carried an article
titled "On Mistakes and Perversions in Aesthetics and Literary
Scholarship," which again fiercely lashed out at the scholars who had
been "ideologically perverse" and "morally deficient."
38

Simultaneously, many of the Moscow cosmopolitans were dismissed from
their jobs. An article by Georgii Margvelashvili, "Cosmopolitans and
Aesthetes in the Role of Teacher," in the main literary newspaper,
Literaturnaya Gazeta, reported on the purge of Jews in academia:

Now that the exposed [Abram] Brovman, [Fedor] Levin, and [Lev] Subotskii
have been expelled from the Institute of Literature, the atmosphere has
become healthier. The steadfast collective of students and instructors
is purifying the Institute's atmosphere and getting rid of unhealthy
influences.
39

The foremost theatrical college in Moscow and Moscow State University
also released their Jewish faculty, including some who had already been
driven out of the Institute of World Literature.
40
Isaak Nusinov, who had been a victim of the "first wave" of repression
in 1947, was arrested in 1949, and he died soon thereafter in Lefortovo
Prison.

Terms such as rootless cosmopolitans, bourgeois cosmopolitans,
and individuals devoid of nation or tribe continually appeared
in newspaper articles. All of these were codewords for Jews and were
understood as such by people at that
time.
41
(One non-Jew, Aleksandr Veselovskii, was also officially consigned to
the rootless.) Of the many crimes attributed to Jews/cosmopolitans in
the Soviet press, the most malevolent were "groveling before the West,"
aiding "American imperialism," "slavish imitation of bourgeois culture,"
and the catch-all misdeed of "bourgeois aestheticism." Stalin's policies
of anti- Westernism and anti-Semitism reinforced one another and joined
together in the notion of cosmopolitanism. One of the victims of the
campaign, Aleksandr Borshchagovskii, later wrote that "the epithet
'rootless cosmopolitan' was sufficiently transparent that it eliminated
any doubt about the [background of] the addressee."
42

The Campaign in Leningrad

Although Moscow was the initial site of anti-Semitic persecutions, the
campaign soon spread to Leningrad. In February 1949, at the initiative
of Stalin, Georgii Malenkov, and Lavrentii Beria, the "Leningrad Affair"
was set in motion. Several prominent officials, including a VKP Secretary;
Aleksei Kuznetzov, who formerly headed the Leningrad Party organization;
Mikhail Rodionov, the prime minister of the Soviet Russian Republic;
and Petr Popkov, the First Secretary of the Leningrad oblast and
municipal Party committees, were accused of conspiring against the VKP
to establish a separate Communist Party in Russia. Rumors soon began
to circulate about British intelligence agents and other such foreign
influences. At joint meetings of the bureaus and plenary committees
of the Leningrad regional and municipal councils, all of the highest
officials were dismissed. Within days, hundreds of other officials were
also fired. Arrests, trials, and executions followed. Repressive actions
related to the "Leningrad Case" continued for nearly three years, until
late 1952.
43

Against this backdrop, a campaign to eliminate Leningrad's cosmopolitans
began. Prominent editorials and articles in Leningradskaya Pravda
emphasized the need "to unmask the acolytes of bourgeois cosmopolitanism
and aestheticism."
44
Numerous theater critics of Jewish origin, including Ilia
Berezark, Simon Dreiden, Isaak Shneiderman, and Mark Yankovskii, were
condemned.
45
The anticosmopolitan drive spread quickly to other professions, notably
literary scholarship. Particularly hard hit were the universities and
Pushkin House (the Institute for Russian Literature). Newly declassified
materials reveal that the practice of informing on one's colleagues
was pervasive in university life at that time. Every student group had
its own informers who reported on their classmates' and professors'
sentiments and opinions. Many professors, upon realizing that informers
were in their midst, became increasingly reserved and careful in their
teaching, especially if "new" students suddenly showed up for lectures.
46
Even these precautions, however, were not always enough to fend off
accusations. Those who were deemed suspect were subjected to relentless
criticism at well-orchestrated meetings.

Four scholars at LGU--Boris Eikhenbaum, the former chair of the Russian
literature department; Vladimir Zhirmunskii, the chair of the West
European literature department; Mark Azadovskii, the chair of the folklore
department; and Grigorii Gukovskii, the chair of the Russian literature
department--were targeted for especially severe attacks. Eikhenbaum
was accused of "kowtowing to the West," "using a comparativist
methodology," and waging an "anti-patriotic campaign to destroy the
national distinctiveness of great Russian writers." Zhirmunskii was
condemned for "disparaging Russian literature's accomplishments" and
"speaking like a devoted mystic and a German Idealist." Azadovskii
was denounced as a "standard-bearer of the ideas of cosmopolitanism
who mercilessly slandered the great Russian poet Pushkin" with the
suggestion that West European literature may have influenced Pushkin's
work. Gukovskii was charged with "promoting bourgeois cosmopolitanism
and formalism in their worst and most noxious sense."
47

At a meeting convened in April 1949 to lay out the charges against
these four scholars, everyone who spoke emphasized that the four had
been "fight- ing against the Party and against literary scholarship"
and had been seeking to "disarm the Soviet people ideologically and
to eviscerate the Communist education of the young." Although some of
the LGU faculty attending the meeting knew that the charges against the
four scholars were spurious, they were aware that any attempt to speak
in defense of the accused would be
grounds for similar reprisals. In a few cities outside Leningrad, notably
Rostov-on-Don, some scholars did try to speak on behalf of the four,
but they were immediately silenced, and appropriate measures were meted
out against them.

All four of the scholars were dismissed from LGU. Their written work was
expunged from journals and anthologies--even ones that had already been
edited, collected, and sent to press.
48
Their names were deleted from indexes in academic libraries, and
references to their works vanished from footnotes and citations. Every
effort was made to turn the four into non- persons. Some of the other
LGU faculty were ready to appropriate the ideas and unpublished work
of the four scholars, passing them off as their own.

Of the four, Grigorii Gukovskii met the worst fate. Arrested in August
1949, he died in Lefortovo Prison. Boris Eikhenbaum had been in the
hospital for an unrelated condition during the denunciations, but he
learned about the accusations almost immediately, while he was still in
the hospital. For the next few years he was forbidden to publish anything,
and by the time he died in 1959 his spirit had been crushed. Mark
Azadovskii was fired from both Leningrad University and Pushkin House in
1949, and he began experiencing grave and untreatable problems with his
heart, which led to his death in 1954. Vladimir Zhirmunskii was somewhat
more fortunate. Although he was fired from the university, he was able
to keep his position as Senior Fellow at Pushkin House. After Stalin's
death in 1953, Zhirmunskii was able to return to LGU. In 1966 he was
elected a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He died in 1971.

Conclusion

The events of 1949 in Leningrad marked a new stage in the
anti-cosmopolitan campaigns, which persisted for another few years until
Stalin finally died. Eventually, the victims of the anti-Semitic purges
were rehabilitated, but this almost always occurred posthumously and in
a perfunctory manner. As for those who perpetrated the repressions, most
of them (like Stalin) died without suffering any reprisals. The great
literary scholar and diarist Lidia Ginzburg once reflected on the nature
of those who had participated enthusiastically in the anti-cosmopolitan
campaigns:

Precisely what kind of human material was relied on for this kind of
action? Naturally, there were sadists among them, misanthropes, cold-
and hot-blooded killers by nature. But this was merely a pathology and was
not the typical case. . . . At that time, the main goal of scholarship in
the humanities was not to uncover truth, but to do something completely
different. Accordingly, such scholarship was assigned to people adapted
to other things who were completely ungifted in humanities scholarship
and were therefore utterly indifferent to the accomplishments of these
tasks. This was an inviolable law--gifted scholars would certainly
have brought to the process an undesirable interest in the essence of
what they were doing. Talent goes hand in hand with self-sacrifice and
stubbornness. Thus did lack of talent become a prerequisite of vast and
principled social importance.
49

The adverse effect of this episode on Soviet academia was immense. Entire
fields of study, especially in the humanities, were corrupted and
destroyed. Intellectual life never fully recovered from the shock. Many
of those who carried out the repression remained in high academic posts
for years or even decades afterward.

The overt anti-Semitism of the anti-cosmopolitan campaigns and of other
events in Stalin's final years left its own poisonous effects on Soviet
society--effects that continue to this day, at least in some measure, in
post-Soviet Russia. Although the phrase rootless cosmopolitans
has not yet been revived in Russia, other slurs and codewords for
Jews have been routinely invoked by ultranationalist and Communist
Party officials over the past several years. The transformation of the
campaign under Stalin from an anti-Western orientation to an ugly form
of anti-Semitism--just a few years after the Holocaust--set a dangerous
precedent. The whitewashing of the anti-cosmopolitan campaigns for several
decades afterward left a gap in our understanding of the domestic context
of Soviet foreign policy in the late 1940s. As more about these events
becomes known, the link between Stalin's increasingly belligerent policy
abroad and his violent repression at home seems ever stronger.

Konstantin Azadovskii is a member of the editorial board of
Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, a cultural journal published in
St. Petersburg, Russia.

Boris Egorov is a research fellow at St. Petersburg State
University, Russia.

Note

We are grateful to the Davis Center for supporting a translation of a
few portions of this article.

26.
The statue of Veselovskii at Pushkin House presented several ideological
difficulties. It could not simply be discarded because it was too
large and heavy to move. The high cost of the statue also made disposal
unattractive. Ultimately, it was covered with canvas, and bookshelves
were placed in front of it.

28.
This new word was uttered for the first time in January 1948 by Andrei
Zhdanov during a speech at a Congress of Soviet Musicians at the VKP
Central Committee. The Soviet press used a number of variations. For
example, E. Kovalchik, "Bezrodnye kosmopolity," Literaturnaya
gazeta (Moscow), 12 February 1949, p. 2; and S. Ivanov, "Naglye
propovedi bezrodnogo kosmopolita," Vechernyaya Moskva (Moscow),
14 March 1949, p. 3.

31.
It was also at this time that the practice began of indicating the
Jewish origins of a person by including his or her original surname in
parentheses; for example, E. Kholodov (Meerovich).

32.
See the declassified documents and commentaries in Joshua Rubenstein and
Vladimir Naumov, eds., Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition
of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2001). Aleksandr Borshchagovskii has written extensively about
the decimation of groups of theater critics and repressions relating to
members of EAK (Evreiskii Antifashistskii Komitet) in the documentary
books Zapiski balovnya sudby (cited above) and Obvinyaetsya
krov': Dokumental'naya povest' (Moscow: Kul'tura, 1994).

33.
The first was the decree issued by the VKP Politburo on 26 August
1946, "On the Repertoire of Dramatic Theaters and Measures for Their
Improvement." published in Pravda (Moscow), 31 August 1946, p. 1

48.
Not only the works of these scholars, but also articles and books that
were not responsive to the "spirit of the time" were cut or, in the
best cases, shelved. This happened, for example, with M. P. Alekseeva,
Russkaya literatura na zapade (Leningrad: Nauka, 1970); and a
dissertation by G. Ya. Chechel'nitska, "Russkaya Literatura v tvorchestve
Ril'ke."